Friday Round Up: Everything IS Awesome

Apparently there really will be a fifth Alien film starring Sigourney Weaver as Ripley. Director Neil Blomkamp spoke with French TV the other day about his new film Chappie and he and Weaver confirmed that it’s happening, it will not ignore parts 3 and 4, but his aim is to be closer to what they did in the first two. I love the first two Alien movies and enjoy the rest to varying degrees. Weaver still looks pretty amazing. I think this is good news. But we have even more. Star Wars, Duck Tales, Net Neutrality. It’s been a big week. No mention of escaped llamas or what color a dress is because, c’mon, this is about geek news.

MOVIES

Author Mike Klimo wrote a long, thorough and well-researched article about the Star Wars prequel films. In it, he argues that George Lucas actually built an intricately complex structure, known as Ring Theory, and cites a lot of evidence that structurally, the entire six Star Wars films are laid out intentionally and successfully. Sure, it doesn’t really speak to performances or special effects but it does address many of Red Letter Media‘s criticisms of the prequel films. I found it to be an utterly fascinating read and actually made me appreciate the films on one level. Something I’d kind of given up on years ago. Worth a read!

Rob Schrab was announced as the director for the Lego Movie Sequel (that’s what it’s being called as an official title) and I can’t think of anyone more perfect. Miller and Lord, who wrote and directed the first, will help write and produce. Who is Schrab? Shame on you for not knowing. Hand in your geek credentials! After writing and illustrating his self-published comic Scud, the Disposable Assassin, he leveraged that into working on Hollywood projects. He co-wrote the pilot Heat Vision and Jack with Dan Harmon. If you haven’t seen it, click that link now! He co-created, wrote, produced and directed for The Sarah Silverman Program, co-created Channel101, and lately has directed lots of episodes of shows like The Mindy Project and Community. His absurd humor and amazing visual style is perfect for a Lego movie sequel.

Marvel released an official movie poster for Avengers: Age of Ultron. While the movie looks great, the poster is terrible. Just awkwardly PhotoShopped characters with different perspectives and lighting and all jammed together with no coherent design. Terrible. But the credits at the bottom are very interesting. There will be superhero cameos and even a hint that Spider-Man could appear in some manner. Click here to read our thoughts on why we think that.

TV

Ducktales is going to be rebooted by DisneyXD. I never saw this because I was a few years too old. But it was beloved by Millenials and now the Homeland generation will get to learn about Scrooge, Huey, Dewey and Louie and their adventures.

Another show I never saw because I didn’t have cable as a kid was Danger Mouse. Well, that’s coming back too along with Inspector Gadget and they’ll be on Netflix. Enjoy.

The CW shows Arrow and Flash are pretty big hits (by CW standards) and the producers have been asked by the network to create another show in the shared universe. Both shows have introduced plenty of superheroes and villains and the current plan is to use several of them. The report is that it would use Brandon Routh as Atom (from Arrow), Victor Garber as Dr. Stein/Firestorm (from Flash) as well as Wentworth Miller’s Captain Cold and Caity Lotz. There’s a few weird things in there. First, no mention of Robbie Amell as the Ronnie Raymond half of Firestorm, who is the actual body. Captain Cold is a straight up villain on Flash (even though he has teamed with the Justice League in the New 52 continuity) and Caity Lotz played Canary who, spoiler, is dead. They also mention 3 other superheroes who have never been on tv will be part of the show and that it may get picked up straight to series as a mid-season show for next year. What would the show be called? They won’t be allowed to use Justice League because of the upcoming movie and another network is developing Titans so my guess is The Outsiders.

REAL LIFE

TIME created this graphic a year ago to show how it could have affected everyone

We all got a huge win regarding net neutrality this past week. The FCC declared that the Internet is a utility and therefore service providers cannot charge content creators (like Netflix or onling gaming networks) more money or throttle their bandwidth. It’s a win for the public because it means we won’t have to pay artificial increases on all the stuff we actually use.

SURVEY

So what would you like to see discussed here? Should I have more comic book news? Toy and gaming stuff? Food reviews? I’m just trying to keep things going while Vincent is deluged with his school semester and work schedule but I want to give you what you’re interested in. Let me know!

About Chris Piers

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I never even thought to look at the credits on that poster. Falcon, Peggy, Heimdall, and the weird doctor dude from Thor. Interesting cameos. You’re right, though – that poster is TERRIBLE. I love how Fury looks like an awkward ghost off to the side.

Hadn’t heard the news about Schrab. He’s a good fit for that franchise.

Chris Piers

I like to really analyze stuff in the background that gets ignored. Or in this case, credits that no one wants to read.